Posted on 07/28/2009 7:12:11 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Driving a subway is so easy an 8-year-old could do it – and one straphanger claims that's who he saw behind the controls of his train.
Jules Cattie, a 41-year-old lawyer who lives on the East Side, was shocked when he saw a young child at the wheel, next to the driver, of his Lexington Avenue express train Sunday, according to the Daily News. And the MTA says it's launched "a vigorous and thorough investigation" into the allegation.
"I saw him driving. He couldn't have been more than 8 or 9," Cattie told the News. " I thought, 'This is really dangerous.' That has to be the craziest thing I've ever seen."
Kids obviously aren't allowed to drive trains; no one's even allowed to be in the cab with the train operator, according to MTA rules. So if what Cattie says he saw wasn't just a figment of his imagination, someone's going to be in trouble.
At first, Cattie just thought the train operator was teaching a newbie how to drive a subway because he heard her giving instructions.
"It's green, speed up," and "Yellow, slow down," he recalled the operator saying.
But when the train stopped at 14th Street and a boy came out of the driver's cab to tell riders they were being held up because of traffic, Cattie was stupefied. He pressed his face up against the glass of the cab to get a better look, and saw what he thought was an MTA operator letting her son have a go at the controls, reports the News.
"The kid was standing there with a female conductor behind him. A little, little kid standing there," Cattie, who took a picture of the two with his cell phone, said.
Given recent news about devastating train accidents in Washington and California, the lawyer found the sight particularly disturbing.
Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges said authorities wouldn't be able to identify the driver until today, at least, due to weekend shift changes, but promised she would be pulled off the job immediately if the investigation determines Cattie was right about what he saw, according to the News.
This wouldn't be the first time a transit employee was disciplined for giving someone else a turn behind the controls. Ten days ago, a Long Island Rail Road engineer was suspended without pay for allowing a passenger to drive the train.
(search— from elvis-costello.net :
>>’’Daddy, Can I Turn This?’’ is the most furious rock song on the album. The title comes from a news account of the last words heard before a plane crash a few years back, right?
That phrase occurs in the transmission from the flight deck of an Aeroflot jet that crashed in Russia. The pilot is supposed to have let his 13-year-old son pilot the plane, and that’s the last thing he’s supposed to have said.
You can steer trains wow I had no idea no more tracks ?
Passengers on board?
Yeah, I remember that. Instant Darwin Award.
elvis costello seems to have a buttoned-down fascination with the morbid.
Management ought to bring this up at the next union contract negotiation. “It’s so easy, an eight year old can do it!” Sounds like a minimum wage job.
I searched for that on YouTube but no results.
And how much will Jules the Lawyer be suing for. Pain and suffering, you know. Fifty or sixty million might make him feel better.
elvis costello seems to have a buttoned-down fascination with the morbid.
_________
thank God for that.
i used to ride that train everyday. it's always packed. fastest train in the city from my experiences.
Well I meant that reply for raccoonradio. I didn’t hear about that Russian aircraft incident.
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